


His nightly routine 2

by Woozletania



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 13:14:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19702105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woozletania/pseuds/Woozletania
Summary: As more Guardians realize what Rocket is up to at night, something of an impromptu family conference helps them decide what to do about it.





	His nightly routine 2

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madness_on_the_milano](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madness_on_the_milano/gifts).



Star-Lord cursed under his breath, stalking around the common area. The Guardians seated around the fold-down table watched as he leaned in under the stairs and poked at Rocket's bed. The raccoon, in the thin-furred part of his seasonal molting cycle, had dragged a blanket into his padded bed and could easily be curled up under it. He wasn't.

"He's not there, friend Quill," Thor boomed. "He and Nebula are out. Testing some new grenades they made together."

"I am Groot," the teenage tree observed.

"Yes, why are you upset at him, Quill?" Drax put down his fork, having polished off a thick slab of frittata. This time the eggs were from something called a Lomax, the peppers and vegetables were local. It was best not to inquire what sort of meat went into the sausage, especially since Rocket had picked it up at the market and Rocket would eat nearly anything. You couldn't afford a picky palate when you spent your early days half starved in an alley after escaping from a lab. 

"Eh, it's nothing." Peter flopped into a seat by the table and grabbed a piece of toast. "He keeps breaking into my room at night. New lock every day, he gets through every one. I guess it's a challenge to him."

Thor belched a reply. He was remarkably good at turning burps into words. "Why?"

"I don't know. He looks at me? Sleeps on my bed for sure, I keep finding fur on it."

"I am Groot?"

"Yeah, while I'm asleep. He's always gone when I wake up."

Drax shrugged and stuffed his mouth with food.

"When the puppy comes into my room at night, he checks out my equipment," Mantis said.

Peter sat up straight. "He does what?"

"No no." Mantis smiled. "Not this equipment." She touched her bosom. "My gear. Last night he spent twenty minutes taking my blaster apart and putting it back together again. I guess there was something wrong with it."

"So he was in your room last night to work on your stuff?"

"He comes in my room every night," Mantis continued. "I sleep differently than you do. Even when I'm asleep I can feel he is there. Sometimes I wake up enough to tell what he is doing."

"I am Groot," Groot observed.

"Yeah, maybe he had trouble sleeping, but every night?"

Mantis tilted her head. "Of course he comes by. He's -" she met Drax's eyes across the table, and busied herself with the remaining food on her plate without finishing the sentence.

"He's what?"

Mantis, looking nervous in that adorably cute way she had, stalled until she ran out of food. Eventually she had to answer. "Maybe he's bored?"

"Hmph." Peter stabbed a sausage link with a fork. "I wish he'd be bored during the daytime. I don't want him wandering around my cabin at night."

"Sometimes," Thor said after another burp, "He sticks his head in through the little flap in my door. He doesn't come in, he just looks at me."

"You too?" Peter's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Groot, is he coming into your room too?"

"I am Groot." _Maybe, how would I know?_

Peter's eyes fastened on the teenage tree's game slate, as always within each reach of Groot even when he was eating. Suddenly he reached across the table and snatched it up.

"I am Groot!"

"Cool your jets, you can have it back in a second." Star-Lord slid the back cover off. "That's what I thought. When did you change the battery last?"

"I am Groot." _You have to change the battery? I never do._

"Because Rocket does." He turned the game around so the others could see the battery with Rocket's shaky '1' written on it. "I bet if I checked his workbench I'd find '2' in a charger. He comes into your room at night and changes the battery. I bet he'd do the same to my blasters but he knows I keep them maintained." Rocket was the best mechanic on the Benatar, but he wasn't the only one. Peter kept his previous ship going for years before the raccoon showed up.

"So he changes the battery in his son's game. That's not so strange." Drax poured himself some juice. "Perfectly normal."

"Every night? And goes into, or at least looks into everyone's room too? Sleeps on my bed?!" Peter slammed the flat of his hand down on the table. 

"First thing he does when I get back is he eggs Lebowski here into a fight with me," he shot a look at Mantis, 'With kniiives', then he starts sleeping on my bed. The little rat."

Drax's eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth, but Thor was there ahead of him. "That is not the first thing he did, Quinn."

"It's 'Quill.' Don't try to distract me."

The thunder god, down twenty pounds already from his fattest thanks to daily sparring sessions with Drax, jabbed a finger at Star-Lord. "The first thing he did was give the ship back."

"It's my ship!"

"It is not." Drax's voice was calm. "Rocket captained the Benatar for longer than you did. Five years, Quill. Five years he and Nebula flew the ship, helped the Avengers. He could claim it. He didn't. He let you take it back and never said a word."

"You knew!" Peter glared across the table. "You knew he was sneaking around at night!"

"Of course I knew. I sleep on the pull-down. I'm right out in the hall, he has to go past me to get to the rooms."

"And you didn't stop him?!"

"Stop him from doing what? Changing batteries? Working on blasters that he wouldn't touch if they were working right?"

Before Peter could explode again, Thor spoke up. "He's had five years, mostly alone, to develop new habits. Is it worth getting into a fight over a harmless one?"

"No." With no one backing him, Star-Lord seemed to realize he was on the wrong side of it all. "It's still creepy he comes into my room. I'm going to keep changing the lock, too, but I'm not going to yell at him."

"Or say anything?" Mantis, quiet these last few minutes, looked up. 

"Fine, I won't say anything." Star-Lord poked morosely at his frittata. "I guess five years is a long time."

"Half his life, perhaps. He is young." Drax shot Thor a look and the thunder god stopped talking. As though on cue Groot picked up the slack.

"I am Groot?"

"Yeah, sorry buddy." Star-Lord put the battery cover back on and handed the game across the table. "Wanna go over some bounties? We need to set up some new jobs."

"I am Groot!" Of course he did. Groot loved flipping through bounty notices. The wanted men, women, creatures, _things_ were so wonderfully varied and bizarre. He never got tired of it.

Thor, Drax and Mantis picked at their food as Quill and Groot made their way up to the cockpit. They waited until Star-Lord turned on the music. Metallica, this time. 'Fade to Black.' One of Rocket's contributions to the music library. At least it wasn't 'One'. That song was _really_ depressing.

"You know." Drax looked across the table at Thor. "Why he does it."

"Of course I do." Thor speared a last bit of sausage on his knife. He didn't eat it. "He's so young. You didn't see what losing his family did to him. He almost worked himself to death trying to get back at Thanos. I helped, got him to eat and sleep and come out of the lab." He paused. "I'm ashamed to say I didn't help much later. After I killed Thanos...I was lost for a time too. By then he had Nebula and the Benatar and seemed all right, but I know he still hurt. I know why he looks in every room at night."

"Because he's afraid." Mantis could feel the fear radiating off Rocket when he came into her room, and how it eased when he saw her. She knew why he did it. Because if he didn't check, they might not be there, and he'd be alone again. So he _had_ to check, every night.

The other Guardians knew Rocket could be suicidally aggressive when his family was threatened. They'd seem him throw himself at Ronan, crash a fighter into that same enemy, risk his life to save them on Ego. But then, confronted with his prickly self-defense mechanism, his seeming anger, they forgot. It was easy to get mad at Rocket. Easy to forgot how much he loved them all.

But Drax didn't forget. Drax was the one that held him as he cried. Now Thor and Nebula and Mantis knew too. Peter didn't, he was too childish in his own way to see how hurt and vulnerable Rocket really was, but just the same he and the raccoon were fast friends. Groot, well, he was Rocket's son in all but name.

And Thor knew how dangerous Rocket would be if he had nothing to lose. He'd seen the terrifying weapons the raccoon tinkered together in Stark's lab in those few weeks after the Snap. Keeping this family together was good for Rocket, the Guardians, and the universe in general.

Rocket and Nebula came back on board, the raccoon all smiles and only a little frayed around the edges from a grenade malfunction or two. There was no fight. Why would there be? No one was going to say a word about his nocturnal wanderings.

Sooner or later it would come out. Either Peter would realize why Rocket was sleeping on his bed and thank him or he wouldn't and he'd blurt it out an accusation in the middle of some argument.

But for now, all was well. Rocket and Nebula cleaned up (it weirded Peter out how they showered together, but they'd been together on the ship for five years and it saved water) and then it was already time to make lunch. Rocket grinned as he told how he'd made grenades that exploded in different colored blasts, just because he could. They went over the bounties Peter and Groot short-listed and listened to Star-Lord talk about the ways he'd tried to find Gamora. Maybe Stark's Snap took her too? Maybe she'd gone into hiding, as only she could? No one knew.

In the end they settled down and had lunch as a family. Just brief words, quiet munching, and the sounds of Drax slurping his soup.

Family. Few of them had anyone outside the Guardians. Family was what kept them going. Rocket more than most, and if it took a few more weeks of his nighttime explorations to convince him that he wouldn't be left alone again, that was fine. It wasn't the first time they helped him get past one of his many traumas. It likely wouldn't be the last.


End file.
